The Experimentation:

I've looked at a number of experiments & ways to implement these experiments within VM's running on Hosted / BareMetal - Hypervisors.

It's then possible to analyze how effective isolation is on the platform by the factors below at the bottom

These include the following:

• Crashme:- By running this application within a VM it causes a high CPU load within the VM and in some cases causing the VM to crash altogether.
• Fuzz :- By sending programs nonsensical messages it can cause a program to act inappropriately, causing the program itself to crash or launch many other programs.
• DoS :- Using special tools its possible to launch a DoS attack against a VM within a Host either within the same Vswitch as other VM's or a seperate Vswitch.
• Forkbombs:- Forkbombs are a great way to put stress onto the underyling physical ram within a host

It's been a long summer, alot of reading and research carried out.

I've read numerous papers on Virtualization & security:

The highlights included a paper on "Secure Virtualization & MultiCore Platforms state-of-the-Art Rreport by Heradon Douglas & Christian Gehrmann of SICS

I've looked at a number of different Hosted & Baremetal Hypervisors including:

Virtualbox, Parallels & VMWare Workstation running on Unbutu/WinXP32bit/Win764bit

Baremetal hypervisors such as Microsofts Hyper-V, Citrix XENServer, VMWare ESXi and RedHat's KVM